Nonfiction

A slamming steel door wakes me up at 2:30 AM. Pulled from another dream of another world of freedom. I lay there semi-conscious until 3:00 AM. I get dressed, pull my boots on, stand up and collect my I.D., scratch my head, then urinate. The day has begun. Overhead, at roughly 3:15, steel doors start …

The sagging steel door scrapes across concrete as you and Momma step into Jeff’s Auto Shop. The ever-present gallery of girlie posters are suspended in a haze of cigarette smoke and engine fumes. Women lounge on motorcycles, cars, beaches. Several pose in string bikinis, cradling power tools. None of them are smiling, exactly, and a …

It wasn’t that she was beautiful. I was nineteen and bulimic and all that mattered was being beautiful but Cece wasn’t beautiful, something off about her jaw from when they broke it to fix her underbite, dirty blond hair knotted carelessly on top of her head years before top knots were cool. It wasn’t the …

1. 8:07 I construct a game. It is a game only I know is being played, and I am the only one playing it. It is a game like a shadow and it is this: seeing how many drinks I can have without anyone noticing I’m not sober. Two hours ago they asked me how …

Winner of the 2024 Annie Dillard Prize (Nonfiction) “Maybe my thinking has been wrong all along. Maybe silence is not something to interact with, to be filled in, but rather to let wash over you, to exist within.” —Victoria Chang, Dear Memory Father:I have never heard your voice, other than in the conversations that neither …

REPUBLIC OF GHANA / REPUBLIQUE DU GHANAPassport / Passeport Type/ Type Code/Code Passport No. / Passeport No. Surname/NomAmoah — my mother’s maternal surname means pit, hole, or trench. The pronunciation of the name is akin to mmoa — meaning animals. Which animal? An ant? An antelope? A buffoon? A bat? Mmoa also means to fold. …

Far out at sea, a small wooden fishing boat thrashes in a fierce storm. Lightning streaks across the sky and rain pounds. Waves crash over the boat’s bow and it capsizes, tossing a tiny human-like creature made of red yarn overboard. He’s cast ashore, sea-drenched. I lean forward, game controller in hand, watching a fuzzy-toothed …

Lisa is the cousin I do the Ouija board with. We put our small hands on the planchette, waiting for guidance. We are too young to light candles, but we dim the lights and that will have to do. We feel the push and pull of each other. We swear we feel a presence. “Are …

The first summer of the pandemic, my parents sold the house in the Poconos. The place was beloved – I loved it for the natural world that surrounded it, for the century old trails and primeval trees and glacial creeks and bogs, while my mom loved the nearby outlets, low sales tax, and cheap gas …

The Criminal Justice System threw us in a cell on Rikers Island to rot and die. We were two teenagers from Brooklyn, born into bondage and a bunch of bad luck. Our teenage years tapered off into being animalized by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. No one had taught us …